Thursday, April 26, 2012

Confronting Damascus: U.S. Policy toward the Evolving Situation in Syria, Part II

Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia
Chairman Chabot and Ranking Member Ackerman:

Thank you for this opportunity to testify before the Subcommittee
on the Middle East and South Asia on the situation in Syria and U.S.
government efforts to force President Bashar al-Assad to "step aside,"
as outlined by President Obama in August 2011.

During Part I of this hearing in December 2011, a representative
of the Obama administration characterized Assad as a "dead man walking."
I agreed with that assessment at the time, and I think much of it still
holds true: international pressure and sanctions placed upon the Assad
regime are having an unprecedented effect on its ability to fund its
operations, and evidence shows that hard currency reserves are being
rapidly depleted. Unfortunately, however, repeated vetoes by Russia and
China of United Nations Security Council action, the overall lack of
"defections" from the core of the Assad regime, and the findings of a
recent visit I made to southern Turkey and Lebanon have all helped me
understand that Assad still has many more political and military
resources that he can call upon to continue what is literally a "death
march" for months if not years to come. To force Assad to "step aside,"
the United States will need to accelerate efforts from the ground up by
supporting the opposition "within Syria" in concert with allies forming
the "core" of the Friends of the Syrian People group of countries.

TREATING THE SYMPTOMS BUT NOT THE DISEASE OF THE SYRIA CRISIS
The Assad regime's continued suppression of the Syrian opposition
continues, and has claimed upwards of 10,000 lives thus far. Thousands
more have been arrested or displaced, including those that have fled to
Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. Recently, the United Nations Security
Council passed a resolution backing a six-point plan developed by
special envoy Kofi Annan intended to bring about a cessation of
hostilities and a process to facilitate a "Syrian-led political
transition to a democratic, plural political system." Despite agreeing
to the plan, the Assad regime has failed to meet agreed deadlines to
cease use of live fire and heavy weapons, as well as its commitments to
withdraw its forces from population centers. The UN has also approved a
plan to place up to 300 monitors in Syria for up to three months to
observe implementation of the plan. Given the regime's failure to
observe the agreement thus far, it is unclear if the monitors will be
able to do their jobs. What the regime's failure to implement the
agreement thus far shows, however, is that what has become known as the
"Annan plan" may be able to deal with some of the symptoms of the crisis
in Syria, including introduction of monitors and delivery of
humanitarian assistance, but it has little hope of dealing with the
disease itself -- a minority-dominated regime with a forty-two-year
track record of being unable to reform, and now brutally suppressing an
opposition carved out of one of the youngest populations in the Middle
East.

The UN monitors who arrived in Damascus recently have observed
protestors brave enough to endure a military lockdown that is severely
limiting the people's ability to use civil resistance to make Assad
"step aside" -- the stated goal of President Obama. The regime has had a
far harder time dealing with civil resistance over the past year than
armed resistance. Assad's actions thus far indicate that he wants to use
the Annan plan to grind down not only the armed opposition, but the
overall protest movement as a whole. Thus the Annan plan, as currently
implemented, serves Assad's interests and directly undermines those of
the United States.

The introduction of monitors is a positive development, but only
insofar as it will help guarantee Syrians' right to peacefully express
themselves in favor of the Assad regime stepping aside. Quite simply,
the regime is failing to implement point two of the Annan plan --
halting fighting and use of heavy weapons and withdrawing its forces
from population centers -- because it knows it cannot implement point
six of the plan: "respect freedom of association and the right to
demonstrate peacefully as legally guaranteed." Assad knows well that
peaceful protestors, who have continued their activities unabated as the
international community has focused its attention on the armed
opposition, will fill Syria's main squares and demand his departure or
worse. To preclude this scenario, he has labeled peaceful protestors as
"terrorists" and used live fire to put them down.

Diplomacy will continue to play an important role as the crisis
unfolds. In the end, Russia and China may be important as part of any
effort to get Assad to step aside and usher in a Syrian government more
responsive to the demands of its youthful population. But Assad's
dodging of the Annan plan's deadline, as well as his attempt via Russia
to blur the main tenets of the agreement by introducing monitors before a
ceasefire, amply demonstrate the limits of diplomacy at this time.

But perhaps most important, the regime's failure to seriously
implement the plan calls into question whether any viable political
solution can emerge from Annan's stated goal of "comprehensive political
dialogue between the Syrian government and the spectrum of the
opposition." In the end, whatever solution emerges will of course be
uniquely Syrian. But what will it look like? A "reform" of the political
system similar to Lebanon's, where various posts and bodies are
essentially allotted to different sects, with Alawites and other
minorities gathered around the presidency and the parliament going to
the majority Sunni population? The Lebanese system was formed over time
and in many ways is dysfunctional. A "managed transition" similar to
Yemen -- a goal of the Obama administration -- may be preferable. But
Assad seems unlikely to negotiate his own exit, especially as Russia and
China have forbidden language in Security Council resolutions outlining
what the end goal of the process would be.

PLAN B: A GROUND-UP STRATEGY
The best way the United States has of ensuring that President
Assad steps aside and expediting a more democratic government in Syria
is to implement "Plan B" -- a coordinated effort to pressure the regime
from the ground up, including support for the opposition "within Syria."
This effort is already partially underway and would be implemented in
addition to sanctions and other diplomatic pressure.
The United States is a member of the Friends of the Syrian
People, a collection of eighty-three countries that met for the second
time on April 1 in Istanbul to support the people and prepare for a
post-Assad Syria. Washington would be well placed to work with the
group's other core members -- which include Britain, France, Germany,
Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar -- to forge and lead a coalition of
countries to more directly support the opposition within Syria and
prepare for all contingencies concerning the crisis. Different countries
would play different roles within this coalition. Gulf countries, for
example, have already indicated a willingness to help arm the opposition
within Syria. Turkey, which had to deal recently with live fire from
Assad's forces in the Oncupinar Syrian refugee camp near Kilis, is now
considering methods to funnel support to the opposition and has
reportedly developed a contingency plan to create border safe havens for
refugees within Syrian territory. Thus far, the United States has
officially committed to giving nonlethal assistance to the opposition
within Syria, which could include communications equipment.

Pressuring Assad to end violence against the population and,
ultimately, make an exit will require more such U.S. assistance. In the
short term, the United States should share limited intelligence with the
opposition inside Syria concerning the deployment and movement of
regime forces -- security, military, and paramilitary shabbiha --
especially as they approach population centers for an assault. This will
help alleviate the effects of Assad's "whack-a-mole" approach to the
opposition, in which regime forces attempt to clear areas -- a tactic
that drives up death tolls and refugee flows -- but cannot hold them.

Second, the United States should intensify its examination of the
opposition within Syria, both those entities practicing nonviolent
resistance against the regime and those engaged in violent revolt. Such
assessment should include ways to support popular self-defense alongside
civil resistance as two sides of the opposition coin. A key first step
would be to intensify the process of identifying and engaging groups
that share not only Washington's short-term goal of ousting Assad, but
also its long-term goals, including a democratic and secular post-Assad
Syria whose government respects human and minority rights.

Third, Washington should immediately expand contingency planning
about possible direct U.S. military support as part of actions to head
off massacres or a humanitarian disaster. This includes supporting the
creation, with allies such as Turkey, of safe havens inside Syria. In
addition, the United States should consider what kind of military force
may be required, and under what circumstances, to assist the Syrian
opposition in deposing the Assad regime.

DILEMMAS POSED BY CIVIL AND ARMED RESISTANCE WILL ACCELERATE ASSAD'S DEPARTURE
Washington should continue to press for UN Security Council
resolutions or statements condemning Assad. But to base its approach on
the likelihood of international consensus on a workable and sustainable
solution to the crisis would be unwise at this time.

The best means of whittling away the regime's support base
continues to be exposing Assad's brutal response to dilemmas posed by
the civil and armed opposition inside Syria. What is going on in Syria
is not a civil war, but an armed and unarmed insurrection against a
regime that responded with extreme brutality to peaceful protest. The
opposition in exile organized under the Syrian National Council may be
rife with divisions, but as the conflict has morphed into a civil and
armed insurgency against the regime, coordination among atomized
opposition groups inside Syria has intensified for reasons of sheer
survival. The United States needs to find ways to promote, assist, and
influence that trend. Such trials by fire, which now are an inevitable
part of the uprising, will likely serve as the forge in which a viable
post-Assad Syrian political system is formed. Greater U.S. involvement
would increase the chances that the new Syria is much more democratic
and closer to American interests than Bashar al-Assad's regime.

Andrew J. Tabler is a Next Generation fellow in The Washington Institute's Program on Arab Politics.